1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a digital camcorder which shoots and records images of an object, and more particularly, to a digital camcorder which also records position and direction information of the object of the shooting.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, a digital camcorder has a function of a video camera that shoots an image of an object and of a video recorder that records the image of the object. An operator of such a digital camcorder takes images of the object and records the taken images on a recording medium such as a magnetic tape or a memory stick. Further, the operator may check the images of the object by reproducing the images from the recording medium. Such reproduced images are displayed through a liquid crystal display, or a view finder. The reproduced images may also be checked by connecting the digital camcorder to an external display device such as a television display.
An advantage of the digital camcorder is that the digital camcorder is a portable image shooting device that is easy to use and is adapted to shoot an image of a desired object in any place, such as for example, a concert, etc. However, the digital camcorder has a disadvantage in that the digital camcorder cannot check the position of the object for which images are recorded during the display of the reproduced images from the recording medium.
In order to overcome the above-mentioned disadvantage, conventionally, a global positioning system (GPS) terminal has been used. The position information of the object of the shooting may be checked by matching the time of the image of the object with the time of the position information calculated from the portable GPS.
However, the operator experiences an inconvenience of having to carry the portable GPS terminal in every shooting in order to check the position of the object. Additionally, because the portable GPS terminal requires a memory of enough storage capacity to store the position information calculated through the portable GPS terminal, the unit price of the portable GPS terminal is quite expensive. The operator also experiences an inconvenience because the operator needs to check the time on the screen by connecting to a personal computer in order to match the time of the position information stored in the portable GPS terminal and the time of the image information stored in the recording medium of the digital camcorder. Further, although the conventional method can check the position of the object by matching the respective times, the conventional method cannot check the direction information, i.e., the direction of the object of the shooting. Accordingly, the operator of the camcorder has no choice but to estimate the direction of the shooting using landmarks that are located near the shooting location.
In order to solve the above-mentioned problem of the conventional cases, a GPS terminal having an electronic compass built therein has been suggested. The electronic compass can check the current position and direction. Through the GPS terminal having a built-in electronic compass therein, the current position and direction of the object of the shooting can be measured and stored. However, this suggestion has the following shortcoming. In order to check the position and direction of the shooting, the operator needs to connect the GPS terminal having the built-in electronic compass to a display device, reproduce images of the object of the shooting from the recording medium, and match the time of the measured position and direction information with the time of the images displayed on the display device.
The operator also needs to store the position and direction information of the shooting in a separate recording medium, and to keep the separate recording medium together with the recording medium storing the images of the object.